XV. CRY WITHOUT CAUSE, AND BE WHIPT.

I HAVE known the city of London almost forty years, their shops did ever sing the same tune, that trading was dead. Even in the reign of King James (when they wanted nothing but thankfulness) this was their complaint.

It is just with God, that they who complained without cause should have just cause to complain. Trading, which then was quick, and 201in health, hath since been sick, yea, in a swoon, yea, dead, yea, buried. There is a vacation in the shops in the midst of high term; and if shops be in a consumption, ships will not be long in good health.

Yet I know not whether to call this decay of trade in London a mishap or a happy miss. Probably the city, if not pinched with poverty, had never regained her wealth.